I agree with this ban on formula freebies.

For some people giving a baby formula might be the best option. And I totally agree that the breastfeeding militia needs to tone it down ... formula feeding is not equivalent to selling your child to a child prostitution ring even if some might make women feel this way.

But hospitals should not be required to advocate formula usage in order to spare the feelings of women who cannot breast feed.

If the hospital thinks that breastfeeding is the preferred method, then they have a right to strongly endorse and encourage that method and to keep formula available as only a "last resort" option.

Formula should be seen as a pharmaceutical to be used as medicine in cases where natural bodily functions don't operate as they are supposed to. If viewed as a medicine, then it is easier for La Leche militant types to realize that chastising a woman for using a formula and bottle is like terrorizing a parent because their child has asthma and needs an inhaler.

One of the problems is that "nurse" is a very feminine word. Of course we should all be better than be worried about something like semantics, but when the name of the profession is the same word used to describe a mother breastfeeding her baby, it is no wonder that many men have a hard time picturing themselves in the profession.

Maybe a better term would be medical caregiver or patient attendant?

I wonder if the airlines noticed an improved ability to recruit male flight attendants once they stopped using the word stewardess?

I realize this isn't anything to brag about, but as a man, I have to say that I find the "before" picture much more attractive. The transformation with the boobs is especially tragic.

I do realize that this isn't the highest quality retouching, but still that whole lighting trick to make the boobs look more inflated is done all the time and I hate it, which really makes me wonder ... who actually likes the end results of these retouching jobs?

Tyler, your story rings true for me. I met my life match while in High School. At the time the fact that she was better in school than I was a prime reason I was interested in her.

I am merely specualting, of course, but it appears that the problem is that the guys who are looking for their intellectual equals find those women while in school. In the post graduation dating field, you are left with all the men who decided not to get serious in college, because they wanted to "play the field more" or because their primary goal in life was to make a ton of money in a lucrative career, and they didn't want a girlfriend weighing them down. This is of course gross generalization, but this latter group of men, on average, isn't usually looking for intellectual equals.

The fact that you know so many couples who met while in school only serves to show how rare it can be to form such a relationship once out of school.

Apparently some people just can't recognize movie magic when they see it and have to jump on some sort of hate train about King Kong. Maybe it isn't a film that stands up to a graduate seminar on story structure, but unless you are just blinded by hate, how could you not love that film?

From what I have heard of Brokeback Mountain it sounds like one of those well made dramas that gets released every year to a tizzy of high praise while in a few years it will just sit on the same forgotten dust heap of competant dramas along with The Piano, The English Patient, Out of Africa etc. All these movies are good, but can we stop acting as if it is some special achievement to create a good drama?

Kong on the other hand is a remarkable achievement for its ability to create a believable relationship between a human and a CGI character. It saddens me to no end to see so many dump hate on the film. If you really love film then it is almost impossible to watch King Kong and not be awed by the achievement in cinematic arts that it represents. For its ability to create a truly believable CGI character who interacts with a human it will go down as a major moment in motion picture history.

Peter Jackson's version of Kong was way more than just a remake. I heard many people claim that he just did an unimaginative rehashing of the original, so I just recently rented the original.

I found the original pretty disappointing. The effects are amazingly better than I would have imagined, but the Ann Darrow character in the original is nothing more than a screaming damsel in distress.

Peter Jackson completely changed the Darrow character by showing her as being much more in charge of her own destiny, which then makes her eventual befriending of Kong to be more than just her passively being admired by Kong. Their relationship is a two way street, and I thought that effectively changed the entire sensibility of the plot from the two previous films.

Apparently Russia is such a mess that there are Russian women who are so desperate to escape that they are willing to marry some complete stranger in America, and that there are enough of these women that an entire industry has been developed around them.

This same country that these women are so desperate to escape from is the also the proud owner of about half the world's supply of nuclear weapons...

Makes you sleep easy at night doesn't it?